Many More In Middle Class Lack Health Insurance

November 25, 2002|By John M. Broder The New York Times

Diane MacPherson, of Lowell, Mass., lost her job at a relocation management company last November, and with it the health insurance for herself, her husband and their 4-year-old daughter. Her husband works in construction and does not have access to health care coverage at work.

Continuing her family health insurance under the federal Cobra program would have cost $931 a month, so the MacPhersons decided to insure only their daughter, at a cost of $270 a month. Two months ago, when MacPherson's unemployment compensation payments ran out, they dropped their health insurance altogether. Although her husband earns about $75,000 a year, construction work is seasonal, and they could not be assured of enough income to pay for health insurance.

The MacPhersons represent a changing portrait of the 41 million Americans who do not have health insurance today. Once thought to be a problem chiefly of the poor and the unemployed, the health care crisis is spreading up the income ladder and deep into the ranks of those with full-time jobs.

According to recently released Census Bureau figures, 1.4 million Americans lost their health insurance last year, an increase largely attributed to the economic slowdown and the resulting rise in unemployment. The largest group of the newly uninsured -- some 800,000 people -- had annual incomes of more than $75,000. They either lost their jobs or were priced out of the health care market by rapidly rising insurance premiums, or -- like the MacPhersons -- both.

The number of uninsured in the last recession, from 1990 to 1992 jumped to 35.4 million from 32.9 million. But it continued to rise even in the boom years of the mid- to late 1990s, reaching 40.7 million in 1998 before dipping slightly in 1999 and 2000.